ARTICLE – NATIONAL OBSERVER

Quebec gets ready for climate disasters

When Alain Bourque started researching climate change, he recalls how, from one presentation to the next, people didn’t take him seriously. There was a sense among decision-makers in the 1990s that climate change would not be an issue until at least 2050, he explained.

But extreme natural disasters at the end of that decade exposed Quebec’s lack of preparation. Following devastating floods in the Saguenay region in 1996 and an ice storm in 1998, a provincial inquiry called the commission Nicolet delivered a warning that Quebec was vulnerable to climate change.